Career Marriage and the Next World

I’ve heard that if you start a business, you’re married to it. It’s a focal part of your life as long as you’re running it. And the same can be said of most serious careers. Many people seem to be married to their careers, to the extent that they neglect or put off having children. Portions of their lives suffer for their career, which is sad when the career is just for money.

Generally, people want super powers, or to be enlightened, or whatever else. But they also want sexual adventure, fame, and financial fortune. Since it’s pretty damn hard to achieve access to both groups of things, people have to choose wisely (or not so wisely) between their goals. Society at large seems to venerate sex and money, so most people aspire to achieve those in quantity.

People don’t usually think monks are cool. Or the idea of giving up sex just seems beyond them. The thing is, monks (and hermits, priests, wizards, and so forth) are married to a spiritual career. Too many people get obsessed with sex or money to the neglect of everything around them, and monks have that zest too, except it’s pointed at realizing reality beyond conditions.

But you know…it’s not a matter of being a monk or nun. It’s a matter of being married to a wholesome path in general. Lots of folks are married to a path they can’t even see or don’t know anything about, and yet they continue diligently down it. Too many folks are absolutely blind.

That is, too many of us dull the mind in our daily activities. One of the main reasons monks give up possessions, sex and social pleasures is because those things are in direct opposition to a calm mind. Those things ultimately create a tempest where it becomes impossible to tell whether you want to pursue your desires or not; a situation where the individual falsely identifies his/her desires as part of a self.

When you’re in love, ecstatic or infatuated with something, time eludes you — it slips through your fingers. And so do those things or people you love — they disappear eventually. And sometimes the love for things disappears first.

What kind of path can you be married to that won’t spurn a frivolous love and won’t disappear even after you die?